“She knew the years of isolation had altered her behavior until she was different from others, but it wasn't her fault she'd been alone. Most of what she knew, she'd learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would.”

Here’s a negligible fact about me: I love Perry Mason. I’m not even sixty and I don’t need Depends (knock on wood)—I just love a little mystery. Throw in a noir lawyer with hypnotic eyes, intrigue, alliterative titles, and a loyal secretary named Della Street who invented savvy and I’m in. All in. When I researched what to read next, I didn’t realize Where the Crawdads Sing would feel a little mysterioso. I sailed through this audible, returned to it for even 5 minutes at a time, because it was a captivating listen.

Delia Owens’ impressive debut novel revolves around a young girl named Kya Clark who was abandoned by her family at an uncomfortably young age. Truth is, she shouldn’t have survived living in the untamed marshes outside of Barkley Cove, North Carolina. Immersed in the natural world, Kya finds company in the gulls. Love draws her out of a tight shell. And exposes her to another world that seems far less safe than the wild. I agree with the reviewer who said Where theCrawdads Singis “a painfully beautiful first novel that is at once a murder mystery, a coming-of-age narrative and a celebration of nature.” Unlike Perry’s right-hand man, Paul Drake, I do know what I like. And I loved this one!